Donald Trump has signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.
Trump signaled earlier on Wednesday that he intended to issue an order instructing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to open a center in order to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo. This will double our capacity immediately.”
The US naval base outpost in Guantánamo Bay, in south-eastern Cuba, already has a facility used to house migrants picked up at sea, which is separate from the high-security prison for foreign terrorism suspects established in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaida on the US.
The secretive immigrant detention facility does not appear in public government reports, and details have only recently surfaced, including about alarming conditions. As of February 2024, four people were being held at the facility, the New York Times reported, citing the department of homeland security.
Trump made the initial announcement as he signed the Laken Riley Act, which mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes. The act is named after a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia who was murdered in 2023 by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela.
The executive order about Guantanamo itself came a little later on Wednesday afternoon, saying from Trump: “I hereby direct the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States, and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs identified by the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.”
It added: “This memorandum is issued in order to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”
Trump’s order on Wednesday marks the latest effort by the new administration to fulfill the president’s promised threat to remove millions of people from the country.
Since taking office on 20 January, Trump has signed a slew of executive orders aimed at cracking down on immigration, including declaring a “national emergency” paving the way to send US troops to the southern border, suspending the nation’s refugee resettlement program, and revoking temporary protected status for people fleeing humanitarian crises.
According to a Pentagon update on 6 January, 15 prisoners remain at Guantánamo, the smallest number of detainees in the facility’s 22-year history. During final weeks in office, Joe Biden accelerated the transfer of Guantánamo inmates to third countries.
Cuba responded to Trump’s announcement that he plans to open a detention center for migrants at Guantánamo Bay, with the foreign minister claiming the idea “shows contempt towards the human condition and international law”.
Writing on X, the US social media platform owned by Trump backer Elon Musk, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla slammed “the US government’s decision to imprison migrants at the Guantánamo Naval Base, in an enclave where it created torture centers and indefinite detention”.
Also writing on X, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, called the plan “an act of brutality”.
Amnesty International said Guantánamo has been a “site of torture, indefinite detention without charge or trial and other unlawful practices”, adding that Trump should be using his authority to close the prison and not repurposing it for offshore immigration detention.
